Motorola unveiled the Edge 50 Fusion in April alongside the appropriately named Edge 50 Pro which Trevor loved. As a more budget friendly option, the Edge 50 Fusion offers a heap of features, without the cost.
Starting at $599, the Edge 50 Fusion comes with a 6.7” pOLED display with up to 144Hz refresh rate, and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 processor with 12GB RAM and 256GB of on-board storage.
On the camera front, there’s a 50MP main camera sensor on the rear which is paired with a 13MP ultra-wide sensor with Macro Mode, and a 32MP selfie camera embedded in the display on the front.
The Edge 50 Fusion also comes with a massive 5,000mAh battery which includes up to 30 hours of battery life, and supports 68W TurboPower charging.
It’s a heck of a mix for under $600, but there’s a lot of competition at this end of the market. So is it worth checking out the motorola edge 50 fusion? I spent two weeks with it, and here’s how it went.
There’s a certain something that Motorola do to their edge series phones that allows them to pack a seeming dump truck of features into a tiny body. They’ve done it again with the edge 50 fusion, with a body just 7.9mm thick and weighing just shy of 174 grams.
The design includes curved edges on the 6.7” pOLED display, something I’m not a huge fan of due to phantom touches when you grip the phone, but so far this seems pretty good.
The display is covered in Gorilla Glass 5 for additional protection, combining with the IP68 certification on the body makes for a decently protected phone – but best not to test it ;).
The phone comes in three colour options, with distinct finishes. There’s the dark “Forest Blue” in the traditional (PMMA) plastic material, a light “Marshmallow Blue” in Vegan Leather, or if you want to make a statement there’s a Hot Pink in Vegan Suede.
Motorola has sent over the Marshmallow Blue with the vegan leather finish. It’s a bit divisive, but I like this soft feel on the rear – though the longevity of the vegan leather is something I really want to test over a year.
The rear of the phone is fairly simple, with the Motorola batwing logo in the middle in a shiny plastic disc. The dual rear camera array is seated a slightly raised bump on the top left leaving the phone slightly off centre when sitting flat on the desk.
There’s a shell included in the box which improves the rocking when flat on the desk, but doesn’t completely solve it. It does protect the rear of the phone, though feels a little flimsy – but I am never one to knock back a free shell/case, so it’s a good one to have until you find a case that’s right for you.
The thin frame includes the power button and volume rocker on the right, with the speaker, SIM tray and USB-C port on the base. There’s a small Dolby Atmos logo on the top, but that’s about it.
There’s a 6.7″ Full HD+ (2400 x 1080) resolution pOLED Endless Edge Display on the motorola edge 50 fusion. It’s colour accurate with 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut and it has 10-bit HDR support as well.
At 1600 nits, the screen is bright enough to be easily read in both office lighting or bright sunlight and has a refresh rate support up to 144Hz peak – though that setting will draw more power, so it’s set to auto by default.
As above, I’m not a huge fan of the curved display due to accidental touches while gripping the phone. So far it’s been good though, so I’m pretty happy on that front, and admittedly it slims the profile of the phone so it feels great in the hand.
The fingerprint sensor built-in to the display is fast and accurate, though you also have Face Unlock to make login even faster.
There’s a decent set of speakers in the edge 50 fusion, though it’s not going to blow you away with the low end. The speaker on the bottom of the phone pairs with the earpiece to offer stereo sound, which has spatial audio thanks to Dolby Atmos support.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 in the edge 50 fusion is a capable chip when paired with 12GB DDR4 RAM and 256GB of UFS 2.2 storage. It’s a slightly older and slower RAM and storage medium than you find in flagships, but it’s reliable and works well in this configuration.
The phone handles most things with ease, though can get a little slow when multitasking or playing more graphically intense games. There’s also a few moments waiting when in the camera app, and it can also be quite slow to boot, taking a good 20 seconds longer than more flagship level devices.
Overall though it’s a nicely specced device which handles most things with ease, and just takes a little longer with everything else. As usual, I ran it through 3DMark and Geekbench, and here’s how it went.
The phone supports Dual SIM in the form of a single physical Nano SIM, with eSIM support. The chipset includes a 5G modem which had great connections for me – though as usual your mileage may vary on your local towers.
Wirelessly you get standard dual-band Wi-Fi support and Bluetooth 5.2, both work great – though a bump to Wifi 6E would have been good.
The motorola edge 50 fusion includes a dual rear camera array incorporating a 50 MP main sensor with OIS, with a 13 MP Ultra-wide sensor which has a 120° Field of View, and doubles as a Macro Vision sensor for up close work. On the front you get a 32MP selfie camera embedded in the display in a punch hole notch.
The 50MP main sensor on the motorola edge 50 fusion is very capable, including Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) for a clear, blur-free shot. While you can shoot at 50MP (and deal with those huge files), the pixel binning allows the software to stack the images for a better shot which ends up around 12MP.
I’m also pleasantly surprised by the low-light capabilities of the camera, offering a nicely brightened shot without too much noise.
The 13MP secondary sensor offers a wider field of view, though at the cost of resolution and detail, Motorola have included auto-focus on the ultra-wide sensor, allowing it to double as a macro camera if needed.
The 32MP selfie camera offers some good shots with a decent depth of field effect.
Motorola’s camera software is good, offering a customisable carousel of camera functions, letting you swap more often used features – like Night Shot – to the main camera roll. The rest of the features are pretty much on-par with most devices, with Pro mode offering more control over your manual shots, and a bunch of arty style features including Spot Colour, TiltShift and more.
Overall, motorola have continued to improve the camera software and hardware to a point, it’s a pretty good option in its own right.
There’s a large 5000 mAh battery included inside the motorola edge 50 fusion, which Motorola says will last up to 30 hours of use. The phone supports fast charging in the form of Motorola’s ‘TurboPower’ charging up to 68W, with a charging brick included in the box (Win!).
Battery wise, the phone easily lasts 30 hours – more if you’re not using it a lot and leave it on standby. With regular use though, you can easily get well into your second day before needing a charge.
Charging is fast. Very fast, giving you enough power to get through the day in just 15 minutes. Charging is done in just over an hour, making it an exceptionally fast charge.
Overall, there’s nothing to complain about on the battery and charging front, with a great battery life that should last and the option to charge at super fast speeds.
The Motorola Edge 50 Fusion comes with Android 14, with OTA updates ready to bring your phone up to the 1st May 2024 Security patch – at the time of writing. The phone includes Motorola’s myU overlays, including gestures, as well as improved personalisation features.
The phone includes 3 years of OS updates, taking you up to at least Android 17 when it’s released – as well as 4 years of security updates. It’s not quite the seven years we’re seeing from the likes of Samsung and Google, but it’s pretty decent.
There’s not a lot of bloatware on the Edge 50 Fusion, though the usual suspects: Booking.com, Linkedin, Tiktok and Adobe Scan are included in the base load of additional apps, alongside the usual Google apps.
Motorola have been developing a suite of apps for their Android devices, including Moto Secure, their suite for offering options including Secure Folder for your apps, media and files and more secure phone locking. You also get ThinkShield security and privacy locking the phone down.
For those wanting more functionality with their devices, there’s Motorola’s ‘Ready For’ suite. Ready For is a way to share content with other devices including files, your screen and more. This includes being able to use your phone with a monitor, keyboard and mouse, with a desktop environment that pops up – it makes it easier to deal with some work in this setup, and it’s a surprisingly good feature….if you remember it’s there.
Overall, the Motorola software experience is excellent. It’s light enough that you can’t differentiate it from vanilla Android, with some thoughtful inclusions for productivity and security. The only downside is the slightly shorter software support, though three years is pretty decent.
While the focus for a lot of people is the flagship devices, the abundance of good quality mid-range devices often goes unnoticed. The motorola edge 50 fusion fits into this mould, because it checks a surprising amount of boxes on most people’s want list when it comes to a new phone.
There’s a camera that takes good shots in all manner of lighting conditions, as well as a capable processor with 5G connectivity.
It’s not quite as fast as a flagship, but you’re also not paying that premium price, and $599 for all this phone has to offer is a bargain. There’s plenty of competition there though, with Nothing offering their Phone 2a, Samsung with the A34 and even the Reno 11 from OPPO offering good options in this price range.
There’s a lot to like here, if you want to check it out, you can head over to motorola.com.au.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
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